|
Network, writer Paddy Chayefski and director Sidney Lumet’s scathing, scalpel-sharp satire on the television industry, premieres in New York. Peter Finch stars as Howard Beale, an ageing, about to be fired television news anchor who creates a media firestorm (and briefly revives his flagging career and the network's fortunes) when he casually informs his dwindling audience of his intention to blow his brains out live on air. William Holden, Faye Dunaway, Ned Beatty and Robert Duvall co-star as the network big-wigs who initially prop up Beale's public rehabilitation before cruelly abandoning him when his rabid proselytising begins to spiral out of control. In an eerie life-imitating-art scenario, Finch dies before the film is released but wins a posthumous Best Actor Academy Award.
